White Rice & Diabetes

Health researchers said they had found a troubling link between higher consumption of white rice and type 2 diabetes. “What we’ve found is white rice is likely to increase the risk of type 2 diabetes,” said Dr. Qi Sun of the Harvard School of Public Health.

In the studies carried out in China and Japan, those who ate most rice were 55% more likely to develop the disease than those who ate the least. White rice is the dominant form of rice eaten in the world. Machines produce its polished look by hulling and milling, leaving a grain that is predominantly starch with very little nutrition at its best.

White rice, white sugar, white bread and white pasta are white because they are stripped of their mineral, vitamin and fiber content. These are actually poisonous foods for us because they actually cause magnesium deficiency. It is this magnesium deficiency that is driving up the incidence of diabetes to the pandemic level. Neither the researchers nor the medical media seem to think this fact is important enough to broadcast to the world.

Dr. Carolyn Dean indicates that magnesium deficiency is an independent predictor of diabetes and that diabetics need more as well as lose more magnesium than most people. Magnesium is necessary for the production, function and transport of insulin.

Magnesium deficiency induces insulin resistance, hypertension, dyslipidemia, endothelial activation and prothrombic changes in combination with the upregulation of markers of inflammation and oxidative stress.[1] Increasing magnesium levels improves and helps correct insulin sensitivity, which is the fundamental defect that characterizes pre-diabetes, metabolic syndrome, diabetes and heart disease. In several studies, daily oral magnesium supplementation substantially improved insulin sensitivity by 10% and reduced blood sugar by 37%.[2],[3] Without insulin magnesium doesn’t get transported from our blood into our cells where it is most needed.

Researchers found that 55% of obese children did not get enough magnesium from the foods they ate, compared with only 27% of lean children.

Diabetic neuropathy and other complications of diabetes are made worse as a result of concurrent magnesium deficiency. Over 68% of the U.S. population is magnesium deficient, and up to 80% of type 2 diabetics are deficient[4] since they waste more magnesium than others due to out-of-control blood sugar levels.

Children labeled “pre-diabetic” (now 41 million) are in great need of magnesium, which has been linked to preventing the development of type 2 diabetes.[5] In a series of papers, Dr. L. M. Resnick has shown in the test tube that an increase of glucose in the fluid leads to the release and/or displacement of magnesium from the red blood cells; thus in the body, hyperglycemia (high blood sugar) will cause a total body magnesium deficiency.[6] Improved insulin sensitivity from magnesium replacement can markedly reduce triglyceride levels.[7]

A separate Gallup survey (in 1995) of 500 adults with diabetes reported that 83% of those with diabetes are consuming insufficient magnesium from food with many by significant margins.[8] One group has recently suggested that the effects of reduced glutathione on glucose metabolism may be mediated, at least in part, by increasing intracellular magnesium levels.[9]

Repletion of the deficiency with transdermal magnesium chloride mineral therapy[10] is the ideal way of administering magnesium in medically therapeutic doses. Such treatments will, in all likelihood, help avoid or ameliorate such complications as diabetic peripheral neuropathy, arrhythmias, hypertension, and sudden cardiac death and will improve the course of the diabetic condition in general.[11]

What types of rice are OK to eat?